Abstracted Landscapes and Florals

As an artist I love to give myself time to explore new genres, new mediums, test out new ideas and techniques.  For this series, I'm focused on 'loosening up' by both abstracting the landscape as well as using dynamic mark making to create paintings that go beyond 'pretty.'  Unlike my other paintings where I start with an underpainting using either complementary, local or three value colors, I am using black ink or very dark, intensely rich values to create the darkest values. Once the ink or liquified pastel dries, I start layering pastels, all the while working to bring you, the viewer, into my painting from many different angles. I find the results to be very interesting and expressive.